To say our love is in its death throes
is to give it the gravitas
of a body. And like a dead body, it is
slowly bleeding out. But when a body
reaches the end, it has lived
and our love has hardly taken shallow
breaths. maybe it was never born.
Our love is closer to an orange left
in the decorative bowl of fruit,
not in my own home, but my mother's, too
long and forgotten until it begins to smell.
This love-is it rotting or soft.
Or maybe not at all.